matte about whimsical

I'm gonna let you all in on some really intense nail polish world drama: for those of you unfamiliar with it, there's a brand called Deborah Lippmann that makes crazy expensive nail polish, usually $18 a bottle. Being the broke college student that I am (NY state minimum wage is a total joke, I tell you), I can't afford that, regardless of how beautiful her polishes are.

Since blue polishes and glitter polishes are two of my very favorite things, a polish that combined both seemed like a dream. And Deborah Lippman has just the thing--it's called Glitter in the Air, and it's perfect, but too damn expensive. So when Revlon came out with an exact dupe, I was inappropriately excited. I went to three different CVSes, two Rite Aids, two Targets (in two different states!) and a Walgreens, but to no avail. After a month of searching, I finally found it at Stop n Shop of all prices, for under $5. Take that, Lippmann and your ridiculous prices!

Unfortunately, once I finally got my paws on Revlon Whimsical, I was a little disappointed. It's incredibly sheer, the glitter is hard to spread, and it dries very slowly. For this I layered three coats of whimsical over two coats of a light blue polish, Essence Sure Azure, because I think it would take about three million coats of Whimsical to achieve bottle color and even I don't have the dedication for that.

After wearing Whimsical for a day, I added a coat of Essie Matte About You for some velvety matte goodness. PRO TIP: never ever ever ever use a matte top coat over a manicure that is even slightly wet. The matte will cause the polish underneath to shrink and you'll get unsightly cracks in your previously perfect manicure. To combat this, use a quick-dry top coat first, and then apply your matte top coat. I use Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat for all my manicures, and it's a godsend. You can get it for $8.99 at Sally's Beauty Supply, but I've also seen it at Target for a few dollars cheaper. Seche Vite means "dry fast" in French, and has this miracle formula that allows you to put it over tacky (but not totally wet) nail polish and within 10 minutes you'll have a super shiny and super dry manicure. The only drawback is that about halfway through the bottle, the formula will start to get really goopy and will be impossible to apply. This can be fixed by adding a few drops of nail polish thinner, which you can find at Sally's or any beauty supply store.

And because this post has had waaaay too much text and way too few pictures, here's a creepily close-up photo I took with my point-and-shoot of Whimsical before I mattified it:

**note to those who are not Facebook friends with me: I've been posting nails on Facebook since September, but only just started this blog a couple weeks ago. Thus, I have a ton of manicures from the last few months to post, but back then I wasn't really focusing on getting a lot of great pictures. Any pre-blog manicures will have fewer, crappier pictures...just a heads up.